2020 has been hard on all of us. Throughout it all, though, healthcare workers have been busting their butts to help their fellow humans get through the pandemic. For that reason, Dunlop Motorcycle Tires held a giveaway it called the Humble Heroes Project earlier in 2020. Now, the company has officially announced its winner. 

Here’s how it worked. Until the middle of November, 2020, people could nominate a first responder who went above and beyond the call of duty during the pandemic. Eventually, one healthcare hero would win a brand new 2020 Harley-Davidson XL1200 Sportster Roadster. That winner turned out to be a very new Physician’s Assistant named Darwin Longfellow, from Taos, New Mexico. 

It wasn’t just one of Longfellow’s coworkers who nominated her for the prize—it was several of them. Like most people working in healthcare right now, she doesn’t have much time off—but what little time she has, she likes to spend riding motorcycles.  
Here are just a few of the nice things Longfellow’s coworkers said about her when they nominated her. 

“During the start of COVID, [Longfellow] was the first-person doing testing in our community open to any and all who wanted to be tested. She put herself in danger to help people. Darwin has put her life aside in order to assure others are being taken care of during these hard times. I wish I could just insert her in this essay so y’all could meet her in person. Knowing her is loving her. She is such a badass young woman with so much to give in this world,” wrote Ashley Rolshoven.  

“When I first met Darwin Longfellow, it was all about motorcycles. We shared a love of the open road, and the wonders of the desert on two wheels. I learned that Darwin had recently graduated from a Physician Assistant program and was working in a health clinic in rural Northern New Mexico. I was immediately impressed by her passionate dedication to her work, and we became fast friends,” Scott Toepfer’s nomination letter began. 

“In addition to daily COVID-19 test screenings, Darwin provides safety-net care for patients with needs regarding pregnancy, Diabetes, Hepatitis C, and drug addiction. The clinic operates in one of the most impoverished areas of the United States and provides care regardless of ability of a patient to pay, which protects the uninsured, underinsured, and undocumented,” he continued. 

“Darwin loves the open road, and once told me that, ‘Being motorcycle people, we love to move on.’ When the work is done and Darwin can resume her pre-pandemic routine, I can’t think of a better way for her to ‘move on’ than to hit the roads of Northern New Mexico on a new Harley-Davidson,” Toepfer concluded.  

Congratulations and thanks to Darwin Longfellow, as well as to each and every healthcare worker who fights so hard to take care of all of us every single day. Your compassion, empathy, and dedication to caring for people are completely out of this world. As far as I’m concerned, all of you should get a shiny new motorcycle, at the very least. Unfortunately, that’s not something I have any power to do—but you definitely deserve it. 

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